


Wiped Clean

by Ylevihs



Series: How Not to Fall [44]
Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén
Genre: Discussions of abuse, Psychic Manipulation, Spoilers, headcanon heavy, ortega POV, references to violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:08:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22959937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ylevihs/pseuds/Ylevihs
Summary: Richard doesn't want her dead.
Series: How Not to Fall [44]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1327892
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	Wiped Clean

She reminded him of a teacher he’d had in high school. Misses. Misses…Henderson? No, that wasn’t it. But it was close. Anderson maybe. She taught math and fear, with her streaky grey hair and sensible flats and undiluted hatred of teenagers. Proud of the fact that most of her students failed her tests because of how hard she made them. In the top drawer of her desk she kept a list of students she had been able to make cry. And if one student did happen to do well, holding them up as a prime example of her superior teaching skills, never mind that half her class needed to retake every exam. She would stop students in the halls to remind them that they were doing so well now in their other math classes, because she’d taught them ‘good studying skills’.

He’d hated her with the sort of passion only a fifteen year old kid with too much energy could manage. And once upon a time she’d heard him say he hated her—and she’d be so shocked! So Hurt! How could he say such things when she’d helped him so much by sending him to the principal’s office every time he wouldn’t stop tapping his pencil in class? When she’d threatened to call his parents after every doodle in the corner of a test he knew he would bomb anyway? Didn’t he know she’d practically molded him into the man he was going to become?

“Hendricks,” Ricardo muttered, letting his mind wander to keep his hands from wringing Regina’s neck. “Mrs. Hendricks…can’t believe someone married that bitch,” it was a poor comparison between the two, but he could hear her words in Regina’s mouth anyway. If it hadn’t been for me pushing you, you never would have achieved anything. No, not her words.

It reminded him acutely of someone else, too. Taller. Stronger. Sterner. With better access to his heart. They were pushed back. His father was dead. If there was a God, Mrs. Hendricks was dead. The woman tied up in the chair was not, however. Which served as a pretty decent argument against one.

“Who’s Mrs. Hendricks?” Daniel had floated over, apparently done trying to comfort Richard. Under the floating hero’s elbow, Ricardo could see Richard stomping his way upstairs to talk with Mia.

“No one important,” he muttered. “Just someone she reminds me of. A little bit,” he amended. His thoughts turned a corner as he looked back at the restrained scientist. “What did you think of all that?”

“You mean the things she said?” caution. Or hesitating. “I…,” a flash of something that seemed like a cousin of pain, twice pruned from the family tree, made it across his face.

“You mean there’s really no love triangle with you and Richard and Mad Dog?” trying to make it a joke. Trying to buy them both time. Daniel allowed a soft, forced exhale. No smile though.

“She really doesn’t see him as a person,” A bit of hollow sickness that Ricardo felt echoed in his chest. The emptiness was filled quickly with a desire to drive her skull in. “I guess I just. I thought maybe she’d talk about.” Ended that thought. “Try to convince us that she cared about him. That he was worth something more to her. And instead she just sat there and…like it was pitiful of us to care about him. He,” and Ricardo was suddenly struck by the change in Daniel’s tone that this was something intimate. Something Richard might not want him to talk about to. Well. Anyone. “He worries about that, you know. He’s afraid sometimes that he’s somehow tricked us into liking him—not that he’s gone into our heads but. That the way he acts or talks has manipulated you and I into caring about him. And that one day we’ll both wake up and realize there was nothing to him worth liking. I never really saw where that could be coming from until now,”

The strange hollow pain had left Daniel’s face, replaced with plain and easy hatred. It wasn’t a good look on a face like his. “He can’t believe that anyone would ever love him…I can still see it in his eyes sometimes when I say it. That he can’t quite make it fit in his head, even though he’s trying so hard to,”

Ricardo felt his own desire for violence rise up his veins. He pushed it down. For the moment. Time to change the subject before. Before. “How is he doing?” the confrontation hadn’t gone remotely how he’d been expecting it to. Prepared for screaming. More threats, more sobbing, more. Well. More. Drama, at least. He’d been expecting something like his own confrontation with his parents. Like the fights he’d seen go down between the abused and abusers. It was a cold comfort that it hadn’t. The break was still coming, and when it did. Well. Maybe there was just too much pent up for it all to come out at once. Richard had nailed the reveal, at least, so he got some points for style. Daniel forced himself to land and chewed his lower lip.

“I,” a forced sigh. “I can’t really tell. He’s clearly not doing well but…,”

“He’s not handling it the way I thought he would,”

“No. He’s not,” firm agreement, eyes staying hard on the ground for a second before swinging back up. “Mad Dog doesn’t usually monologue. He just,” and Ricardo watched as Daniel drove a fist into his palm, face carefully blank. Which wasn’t entirely accurate. From his fights with Argent, it was clear that Mad Dog adored banter. Bad back and forth between villain and hero. The comic book drama of being a little shit head during a fight. But Herald’s only fight with him hadn’t included that. Mad Dog had narrowed in on Herald and without any explanation had decided to break him. “He doesn’t want her dead,” A flicker of his attention from Regina and then back to him. Ricardo felt a flush of indignation run up his chest. He knew that. They both knew that, what was with the sudden.

“Don’t you dare look at me like that,” quiet but still punchy. Itching for some kind of confrontation to get this out of his system. The ‘like what’ was playing around Daniel’s face but never made it out of his mouth. Like Ricardo was going to haul off at any second and start pummeling her. Like if he was alone for long enough he’d kill her, there on the tarpaulin carefully spread out to catch her blood. He could do it quick. Easy. One, maybe two zaps. Letting the voltage get high enough to disrupt a heart rhythm already fucked up by the drugs pumped into her system. He felt static in his joints, clenching and unclenching his hands. Cheerleaders in his veins, urging his muscles to move. Or do it slowly. Take the time to make her feel it.

Daniel was still staring at him with a look of. Of. Jesus what was that?

“He doesn’t want her dead,” slowly repeating himself, as if to drive home that there wasn’t an accusation waiting to leap up and snap around Ricardo’s throat. “He wants her to suffer,” his voice had slid into a whisper, but there was a dangerous filigree to the words. A ‘shut the fuck up and listen, old man’. Well. Maybe not that from Daniel, but the edges of his words had spirals and fronds. And spikes. It was ‘pay attention’.

Oh.

Oh.

“What do you think he’s going to do? Since he won’t let,” Ricardo’s mouth stopped and amended something. “He won’t let us kill her,” Us. Because Daniel wanted it too. The realization came shamefully late to the party and was trying to slip into the kitchen without being caught in a conversation. Daniel had known about the things Regina had done for a lot longer than him. And had been living with Richard for. For long enough to see consequences that Ricardo couldn’t bring himself to think of. Had Herald ever killed someone before? Not that he could remember. Maybe he shouldn’t have said us. Shouldn’t have included the. Not a kid, he corrected himself. Not a kid, the same age as when he’d been made Marshal. He hadn’t killed yet by that time either. But he’d been ready to.

Daniel’s face crimped tight. “I don’t know for sure,” he hedged, shoulders rising a little. “but he doesn’t want to see her just sent to prison. He’s afraid they’ll just make her the scapegoat—make her out to be a mad scientist. She’ll get locked away but there are other people who will help her pick up where she left off. And that’s not a good enough punishment in his eyes,”

“He’s right,” all bitter almond arsenic to his words. Daniel nodded. And swallowed audibly.

“I think he wants to do something to her mind,” trailing. Thin. Notes of dread. Playing in with something else and playing dirty at that. “Make her unable to be a threat to anyone else ever again,” Daniel shifted his weight to lean in closer. A quick glance upwards showed Richard still talking with Mia, which didn’t mean he couldn’t tell what Daniel was thinking.

“By doing what?” Ricardo found himself obediently leaning in as well. Co-conspirators swapping secrets in a dark alley. Gossiping coworkers at the water cooler.

“He told me once…that when he goes into someone else’s head, like when he went into Angie’s, you remember?” he nodded, and Daniel took in a deep breath. “That he can do some real damage there. Physical damage. And I know he can change how things feel,” Daniel’s cheeks took on an interesting cast of pink, which was noted down in one of Ricardo’s mental filing folders to be examined later. “But it would make sense he can make them feel worse. Or mess up her mind so badly that,” another trailed sentence, the look in his eyes suddenly going distant. And then he shook his head like a dog shaking off water. “I think he might be preparing to do something like that,”

Ricardo let Daniel’s words hang in the air for a while, considering them as they swayed up on the gallows.

“And if he is going to do something like that, are you going to stop him?”

The answer was quick. And grim.

“No.”

Surprisingly solid feeling.

It settled like a rock in the bottom of his throat. One of them had to hold out against something like that. Hold out against torture for torture’s sake. Advise against revenge. Digging two holes all that jazz? It certainly wasn’t going to be him. And Wei was back at headquarters.

“I wouldn’t either,” he said, more for Daniel’s benefit than to get it out in the open. “So. He gives her a psychic lobotomy,” Daniel flinched slightly but recovered quickly. Whatever internal moral war had been waging had been won. Ricardo couldn’t be sure it was a good thing. “And then what?”

“I don’t think he’s gotten that far. From what he let me see and know about his newest plan,” and oh, that was quite a lot of back of the throat acid there, wasn’t it? A sore spot for all of them, it seemed. “He hadn’t figured out how to attack the Farm without getting people killed and keeping himself alive. And he’s worried that if the Mia breaks the story before he can attack, that they’re either going to cut things so sharply off from the outside world that there’s no way to find anything, or that they’re going to wipe everything clean,”

“You think they’d destroy themselves?” it seemed unlikely, but it had happened before. Historically speaking at least. People willing to set fire to everything they’d worked for, because they knew how fucked up it had been to achieve them in the first place. They can’t use evidence of your crimes if you incinerate it all. And if the only person willing to testify against you doesn’t count as a person?

“They might,” Daniel admitted, looking nervously down at Regina. “He’s scared not just that they’ll fry their own computers and burn the evidence. That they’ll kill any Regenes they have on site in order to save face. People show up to investigate and find what? An army of brainwashed slaves? Not here, as you can see. No violations of human rights anywhere at all. And it would take a while to recover from. A lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of tricky computer work. But they did it once,”

“They can do it again,” Ricardo heard himself finish. “Okay. So—,” A thin, electronic crackle cut him off, coming from the back pocket of his jacket. A cleaner, more refined ding from the advanced comm unit in the front pocket of Daniel’s jeans.

“All units be advised, LDPD is reporting an unknown suspect threatening civilians and destroying property, headed Southbound towards West Fifteenth Street. Several injuries reported but no known casualties,” a brief pause from the staticky voice. The interim silence bumped around the wide space, elbowing the walls. Ricardo glanced up to meet Richard’s gaze at the top of the catwalk. Fear. West 15th. Barely five minutes away. “Be advised, subject appears to be unarmed but should be considered extremely dangerous. LDPD is requesting immediate assistance,”

Before either he or Daniel could react, Argent’s voice buzzed through. “On my way; anything else Carol?”

The voice changed slightly, slipping out of official information relay mode and into conversational. “Apparently they tried crashing a police cruiser into her. She picked it up and tossed it onto the third floor of a nearby building,” Argent’s sarcastic ‘ooh’ was cut off by Richard running down the metal grating. Loud. Too quick.

“That’ll be the regene you zapped,” his boots hit the concrete and he was moving to grab his helmet and slam it back down over his head, the brief glimpse of his face showing wide and frantic eyes. “I didn’t think she’d be able to track us this quickly,” his words garbled halfway through as the modulator took back over. Growling and snarling. Hiding the panic pretty well. “I was hoping that blast you gave her would have fried any tracker she had on her,”

Not well enough. The gloved hands were still twisting over each other. Boots stuttering on the ground now, unable to move closer to Regina and unable to dart back and away.

“It should have—,”

“Ricardo,” Daniel’s voice cut through, a sudden break in the gathering storm. The winds of Richard’s distressed movements falling flat. Jesus, it was like shooting him with a tranquilizer dart. “Can you make sure Mia gets out of here safely?” Not really a question. Or at least, not really the question he was trying to ask.

“Yeah?” startled slightly but nodding anyway. And then feeling it click. Danny could fly with Regina while Richard and his driver kept up on the ground, but Mia had to get out of the way, and get out fast. And, something in the back of his head reminded him, it was a little tit for tat. Herald had let Charge and Mad Dog have a private moment by taking agreeing to fly Mia back to her office. Now it was a nudge back, asking for the same allowance.

What he was going to do with it grinned hideously from the back of Ricardo’s mind. Picking a fight between the urge to spare Daniel from seeing whatever it was Richard really was going to do with Regina, and the tight and sick knowledge that if they traded places. If he stayed behind and made Herald fly Mia back again, it would be something he’d regret. He’d do something he would regret. As much as he hated to admit it, this needed to be something that went down between Daniel and Richard. “Yeah.” He nodded firmly and crossed the floor in three easy steps to the bottom of the metal stairs.

For her part Mia was only halfway down the stairs, squinting and fumbling with something in her purse. There was a click of her changing a tape in her recorder. Apparently she was willing to risk the sounds of traffic on his bike to try and get more information pulled from him.

“I’ll keep an ear out in case Angie needs help,” moving to the door and pulling it open with a shrieking slide. Neither Daniel nor Richard was paying him much attention any more. He thought.

“Be safe,” the low rolling growl of the voice modulator called out after them. Hard to tell the tone, but it sounded sincere enough. A final glance over his shoulder saw Daniel rise up enough off the ground to lay a hand on Mad Dog’s pauldron as Richard took a step towards Regina.

He closed the door and was greeted to the sound of heavy metal music and the sight of Mad Dog’s driver cleaning out the backseat of the car. Several wet wipes already littered the ground at his feet, ranging from darker red to progressively lighter and lighter pink. Finally without any staining at all. He was still wiping, clearly not a fan of the blood. And apparently Regina was a bleeder.

“Make sure you get those thrown away,”

The man straightened a little too suddenly and knocked his head against the ceiling of the car, a hard profanity halfway out of his mouth before he turned and saw who was talking to him. His face, still without a name attached to it, lost a bit of color.

“I will, Mister. Uh. Charge,” and then added on “Sir,” a pause and some rapid blinking. A quick look at the backseat which for all intents and purposes seemed to be fully clean at this point. “Um,” clearly debating something. “Can I offer you a ride back to your office, Miss Ochoa?” ah. Trying to suss out exactly what his boss was up to without overstepping. And wondering if the services he offered extended to temporary allies.

Mia looked at the collection of blood stained towelettes, the driver’s nervous face, and then back at Ricardo. Holding a gaze that said, very plainly, ‘uh’. “I think I’ll be alright with Charge, but,” twisting her mouth into a professional smile. “Thank you for the offer,”

“Sure. No problem,” relief flooding his expression. “I’d recommend taking the back way,” he nodded his head to an alley off to the right. “There’s some kind of fight going on and it sounded bad a second ago,” he reached in to the driver’s side and tapped the volume down on the car radio. Nothing could be heard yet from where they were at, save for the distant, low level thrum of city life. Maybe a gun shot or two, if one really tried to listen for it. “The update said Lady Argent had arrived on the scene?” with the careful wording of someone who. It occurred to Ricardo. Who had probably driven Richard back to this base when a fight or two with her had gone south.

“Thanks for letting us know,” Mia returned nervously and to his surprise, Ricardo felt a firm push against his ankle. “We should get going before they head our way,”


End file.
